


we were never meant to say goodbye

by nadin



Category: Wonder Woman (Movies - Jenkins), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Post-Wonder Woman (2017), Steve Trevor Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24248065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadin/pseuds/nadin
Summary: His eyes are as blue as the sea behind them, and it surprises her as much as the haunted grief in his gaze, so much of it, it’s no wonder he was sinking. And she wonders – can’t help but wonder – how can one carry this much pain within their soul without it falling to pieces.He blinks and it’s gone, just like that, and she is left asking herself if she had seen anything at all.Or the one where Steve Trevor lives - for a long, long time.
Relationships: Diana (Wonder Woman)/Steve Trevor
Comments: 29
Kudos: 159





	we were never meant to say goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this idea for a while and finally managed to finish it. As always, this story started as one thing and ended as something else entirely, so... Nothing new here. 
> 
> Hope you guys will enjoy it.

The first time Steve almost dies, it doesn’t feel real. His plane is hit, and is careening toward the ground as the wind tears at his hair, his clothes, the bent and ripped metal of the left wing. His mind is numb, his hands frozen on the yoke. The time stops as he watches barren fields grow closer, empty but for a sea of mud.

His heart thuds in his chest once, twice.

The world grows quiet—

“You’re one lucky son of a bitch, Steve,” Sameer shakes his head when he finds him in the infirmary the next morning, banged-up but very much alive. “Not a single broken bone.”

The disgust on his face makes Steve laugh for days.

* * *

The first time Diana sees Steve, her mind is on fire and her blood is flowing so fast it’s making her dizzy. His plane is a welcome distraction from the storm raging inside of her – whatever happened at the training field has left her frightened and disoriented. She doesn’t dwell on the irony of feeling grateful for someone falling to their death as she takes a dive into the cool waters that knock the stunned shock out of her system.

His eyes are as blue as the sea behind them, and it surprises her as much as the haunted grief in his gaze, so much of it, it’s no wonder he was sinking. And she wonders – can’t help but wonder – how can one carry this much pain within their soul without it falling to pieces.

He blinks and it’s gone, just like that, and she is left asking herself if she had seen anything at all.

“You’re a man,” she breathes out and smiles.

* * *

The first time Steve sees Diana, he is a mess. He is lost and broken and damaged in more ways he ever thought was possible. She is ethereal, with the sun glowing behind her head like a halo, and for a moment, he can’t help but think that he has died and gone to heaven. Except heaven wouldn’t taste like saltwater and suffocate him under the weight of his soaked jumpsuit.

Except he knows that he has done nothing to warrant a safe passage into the Kingdom of God.

He wants to ask her, just to be sure. Wants to thank her, too, for dragging him out of the water. But his throat is tight, and his mind is blank, and so he says the only thing any reasonable person would say in his situation.

“Wow.”

* * *

The first time Steve hears about the Amazons, he is 7 and he dreams of becoming a pirate. There is enough romance and adventure in owning a ship and finding hidden treasure and not having to go to school. By then, he has never even seen the sea, but it never stopped his dreaming.

When he hears the myth about skilled warriors living on a secluded island away from the rest of the world, he is not impressed. Who cares if they have swords and armours and horses if they are all girls?

He wrinkles his nose and forgets about them until he is standing in a cave with glowing water underneath a palace, and it is all he can think of.

* * *

The first time Steve takes her to bed, his hands are shaking and his voice cracks when he says her name.

“We don’t have to,” Diana whispers as her fingers curl over his.

He shakes his head. It’s not that. It’s that he doesn’t know how to explain to her that it’s been so long since he allowed himself to feel anything at all that he no longer knows how to. She’s making him feel again, feel everything there is, and the enormity of it is overwhelming beyond anything he’s ever known.

Her cloak slides off her shoulders and then gravity takes it.

Steve winds his hands into her hair and kisses her with a fervour and hunger that has been eating him up since the moment he met her. And this time, he doesn’t hold back.

* * *

The first time he tells her that he loves her, everything is wrong. His lungs are burning and his mind is reeling, and he can hear the seconds ticking away, faster than ever before. They are running out of time.

His heart is pounding so fast that his throat closes up every time he tries to speak and it takes him a few tries to even start. Steve Trevor is no fool. Diana deserves someone better than him. Stronger than him. Someone whose soul is not made of shameful parts they are trying to hide from the world. There is not much he can give her, and a quiet, desperate confession is perhaps all he has to offer. 

He tries to not think of how unfair it feels to have the words come so easily when he has nothing to lose.

Diana’s voice carries faintly after him as he speeds towards the roaring plane.

It shouldn’t have ended that way.

They should have had more time.

* * *

The first time he beaks Diana’s heart, she’s trapped under metal sheets that press her into cold concrete, squeezing her body so tight she can’t breathe, and the betrayal is tight in her chest.

When the fire lights up the sky, a scream pierces the air. It is the most awful sound Diana has ever heard, so full of anguish and pain that it threatens to rip her soul to shreds. No creature should be able to make that kind of sound.

It takes her a moment to realize that she is the one screaming, her very being tearing at the seams.

She feels like she might never be whole again.

* * *

The first time Diana tells him that she loves him, he is pale and hurt in the too-narrow hospital bed with a broken arm and a few cracked ribs and a face that looks like one massive bruise. A cut on his chin required stitches that will leave a scar. When her words cut through the fog in his head, he is not sure he's heard her right. 

Diana spends the night – and the subsequent five - sitting near his bed. She holds his hand and ignores the persistent demands of the nurses to leave. She touches his face like she can’t quite believe that she has found him and Steve doesn’t tell her that her touch hurts even when it’s feather-light, barely skimming over his skin.

He doesn’t care. He'd rather feel her there than feel nothing at all.

He asks her to say it again, and she does. She says it over and over until he falls asleep, and when he does, he dreams of her and the peace that she brings to his heart.

* * *

The first time Diana wakes up from a nightmare, she is not surprised. Yet the intensity of it catches her off-guard nonetheless and the experience frightens her, leaving her breathless, dizzy, certain it has happened all over again. She can smell the smoke, can feel the cold air on her skin, and the distance growing between them until she is left with nothing but a gaping hole in her chest where her hope used to live—

“Diana?” 

She flinches away from him and sucks in a shaky breath. Her body feels like an exposed nerve, like even the smallest touch can set it on fire.

It’s been weeks now, but it feels real in a way she never knew was possible. And it hurts. Even with Steve right there with her, the memory of losing him hurts so much it splits her heart in half and leaves it cracked-open and bleeding. 

She closes her eyes and sucks in a breath until her chest no longer feels like it will cave in any second. In the dark, she watches Steve watch her back until the foot of space between them feels like a gulf and she slides over closer to him, unable to stand it. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers as his soothing hand moves over her back. He doesn’t add anything else, and she is grateful. 

Diana waits for her breath to even out, but tears come instead. He holds her until dawn starts colouring the sky pink and as they fall asleep, a promise to never leave her is on his lips. 

* * *

The first time Steve tells her the truth about his past, his hands are trembling and his breath is caught in his throat and he doesn’t know how to breathe anymore. The dream that jolted him out of his restless sleep clings to his brain like a cobweb he can never get rid of and the words pour out of his mouth before he can stop them.

He half-expects Diana to get out of bed and march right out of his life, and God knows, she’d be within her right to do so.

Instead, she wraps her arms around him – he doesn’t realize how badly he’s been shaking until he feels the stillness of her. She holds him until the early hours of the morning while Steve tells her every ugly, wretched thing he has done that he will never forgive himself for.

She tells him that her forgiveness will be enough for both of them.

* * *

The first time Diana makes him a promise, Steve wants to stop her. He can no longer remember a time when he believed that a promise was unbreakable, if he ever has. Life hasn’t always been unkind to him, but some of its lessons have taught him to tread carefully where his heart is concerned.

He’s had people make promises to him before only to break them in a blink of an eye. He doesn’t want to add her to the long list of his disappointments. It scares him to know that words are never just words to Diana. She means them — always has, always will, and it adds to the weight that crushes his chest for a moment and makes him inhale sharply. 

He bites his lip so he won’t argue and object.

 _I’m not worthy of you_ , he thinks, watching her fleeting smile as she leans forward to brush a kiss to his cheek before she moves on with her day. 

But her face is open, her words earnest. It reminds him that she is better than he will ever be. Better and kinder and more sincere, and the realization stirs the old fear of losing her to someone more deserving.

Steve pushes the thought away and chooses to believe her.

There isn’t much he trusts in this world, but he trusts her. 

Always has, always will. 

* * *

The first time Steve makes a promise, it feels like jumping off a cliff. No promise is ever unbreakable, and he is all too aware of that even though he knows that Diana believes otherwise. Incapable of believing otherwise, he is certain. She has witnessed the worst and the ugliest sides of mankind, has glimpsed into the most wretched parts of people’s souls, and she still sees the good in everyone first.

He doesn’t know how to live up to this. He never has and never will lie to her, but he is used to it. Used to pretending to be someone he is not. Used to breaking promises like it’s nothing, and he can’t bear the thought of doing that to her, however unintentionally.

So Steve chooses the one he knows he will never break, not in a million years.

“I will love you forever,” he tells Diana, and saying it makes him feel light as air.

* * *

The first time Steve cooks for her, he makes a big fuss about it.

“My mother’s recipe,” he declares as she watches him move about the kitchen, her head tilted curiously as her eyes follow the chopping and dicing. It is almost enthralling and she is baffled by the entire affair.

She is not allowed to help because ‘she doesn’t know how it goes’, and Diana doesn’t argue, amused.

He burns it and they have to eat ice-cream for dinner – their only other option being breakfast cereal - and she tries not to laugh at his comically defeated expression. Although when she kisses him afterwards, loving the way his mouth feels both hot and cold against hers at once, it seems to mend this failure quite nicely.

* * *

The first time they have a fight, it is explosive and loud. It comes out of nowhere and at some point, stark in the middle of it, it leaves Steve speechless and at a loss for words. Diana rarely loses her temper, but she is frightening when she does. A force of nature to be reckoned with. She never swears, but he is certain that half the words she just threw in his face were Greek expletives, and he is curious about that, making a mental note to ask her later.

He stares at her, forgetting the fight and the words he has wanted to throw right back at her still circling his mind. Forgetting everything else in the world, if he is being honest with himself. And then he breaks into a smile that makes her stop in the middle of her tirade and stare at him like he has lost his mind.

“Well, I guess we can cross that off the list,” Steve mutters, shaking his head.

They had to have their first argument at some point, didn’t they?

* * *

The first time Steve realizes that he is happy, it is an unsettling feeling. So unfamiliar he doesn’t know what to do about it and he searches for the catch, something that will make it disappear like all good things do in his life.

It’s almost too good to be true, and it frightens him beyond comprehension.

He has witnessed so much ugliness, so much death, that he doesn’t know how to respond to the warmth blossoming in his chest and spreading all the way to the tips of his toes. The feeling is new and fragile, and Steve vows to protect it at all cost.

He slips his hand into Diana’s and weaves his fingers through hers.

There are more miracles to being loved by a goddess than he thought existed.

* * *

The first time Diana misses him, another war is threatening to rip the world in half. She is sick of the carnage and hatred and destruction that seem to seep into every crack and crevice of people’s hearts, and yet is overcome with compassion and the need to stop the madness and protect the innocent.

Steve has been right. It has never been all Ares; men were to blame as well. Still are.

Still, the complexity of it is not easy to accept, although she seldom has time to ponder it amidst the gruelling fight that seems to never end. And the longer it lasts, the more she misses Steve, achingly, desperately. So much so that she can’t help but hear his voice on battlefields. She longs for him the way she never has before, the pain and loss all around her coil like a tight spring in her chest, ready to snap. It all reminds her too much of the war where she almost lost him.

And the anguish of it is almost too much to bear.

Diana finds him in her room one night and he leaps to his feet when she walks in, his lips stretching immediately into a smile so warm that for a moment she can’t believe her eyes.

“Steve.”

He gathers her to him and holds her tight until the fears that have found a home deep in her ribcage ebb and contentment settles in.

“Missed you, too,” he whispers into her hair.

* * *

The first time Steve calls her ‘angel’, Diana doesn’t think he will remember it in the morning.

“S’what I thought when I first saw you,” he slurs, sated and drowsy and half-asleep, lips curled into a smile so dopey she can’t help but smile back, her heart growing ten times its size in her chest. The easiness with which the words come out and the tenderness in his voice makes everything inside of her ache in a way she never knew was possible.

No one has ever called her that, not before and not after. She’s only been _angel_ to him, and she can’t tell why it makes something come undone inside of her. She has never given so much of herself to anyone, and the completeness of that feeling is almost too much to bear.

Diana brushes his hair from his face and presses a kiss to his forehead.

Decades later, a quiet _angel_ whispered between lazy kisses still makes the tender parts of her melt. 

* * *

The first time Diana is scared for him, she is soaked to her bone and the rain keeps on falling and the only thing that she wants to do is leave. It is also the only thing that is not going to happen any time soon, she thinks, as she watches Lois Lane cradle Superman’s lifeless body to her chest and her shoulders shake as she cries.

Diana wants to go back to her hotel room and call Steve. Needs to make sure that he is alright even though she has no reason to think otherwise – he is hundreds of miles away, in Paris, far from the carnage that the Doomsday has inflicted on Gotham, taking a life that wasn’t meant to end so violently, so soon.

It makes her think of her own mortality, of how no one is completely invincible.

It makes her remember the night she watched Steve’s plane explode, thinking she had lost him forever.

When she calls him, it’s almost dawn. He picks up on the first ring. “I saw the news. Are you alright?”

 _I am now_ , Diana thinks, looking at the flickering lights of Gotham outside of her hotel window. She presses her palm flat to the glass and wishes that he was there with her. Her fear of losing him will never be overcome.

“I am. I love you,” she says, her muscles aching as the toll of the day catches up with her.

She doesn’t need to explain to him how she feels.

* * *

The first time Diana realizes that she is happy, it is a quiet, comfortable feeling that blossoms in her chest and spreads over her body, filling her with infinite contentment. Her life is nothing like what she has ever imagined it would be. It is better, so much better that she wouldn’t change a single thing about it, not for the world.

She watches Steve as he sleeps by her side, his chest rising and falling slowly as the cold rain beats down on the roofs and windowsills, the city of London outside the bedroom window nothing but a smudge of grey. Diana lifts her hand and touches his cheek tentatively, careful so as not to disturb him. Her fingers move along his jaw, over his chin. Months later, she still finds it hard to believe that they have made it. That he is hers.

“I will always love you,” she whispers softly in Greek.

In an hour, he will wake up and smile at her, lighting up her entire world. They will have breakfast and read the paper, and she will vow silently to hold on to that feeling for as long as she lives. 

* * *

The first time Diana sees snow, it feels like magic. 

A hundred years later, she and the rest of the Justice League are stuck in Bruce’s house for Christmas because of a snowfall that has shut down all roads and landed all planes. There is squabbling over food and the TV remote and sleeping arrangements and _who is going to cook if they don’t deliver pizza anymore_ and _could you live any farther away from civilization, Bruce?_

“You’re a dirty cheat,” Barry accuses Arthur after losing a game of _Clue_ to him for the third time in a row. 

Arthur only guffaws and Bruce rolls his eyes. Alfred, smartly, refrains from saying anything. 

“Maybe we should try Twister next,” Victor offers with a grin.

“With you?” Arthur chokes. 

Diana leaves them to it. She walks over to the ceiling to wall window and peers out at the snow-covered banks of the lake and the serenity of it makes her chest constrict with nostalgia. 

She is so lost in thought she doesn’t notice Steve until his arms are sliding around her waist from behind. He brushes a kiss to her hair and rests his chin on her shoulder. She sinks back into him - after all this time, it comes as easy as breathing.

For a long time, they simply stand there, watching the snow fall. 

A hundred years later, she still thinks it’s magical. 

* * *

The first time it feels real, Steve is surprised by how easy it is to forget his past — all the death and violence and ugliness he has seen and was certain he would carry inside of him forever. 

It’s early morning, and for once, he is awake before Diana — something that almost never happens. He is a soldier and a spy and an overall clever and intelligent man, but he will never, ever understand her fondness for getting out of bed at the crack of dawn. Unless he is there to intervene and find creative ways to keep her in bed with him, that is. 

Diana finds him in the kitchen an hour later, awoken by the smell of coffee — or, he suspects, the clanging of pots and pans that he has tried but failed to keep on the down-low. He is standing at the stove, sporting only his boxers and thick wool socks as he tries not to burn pancakes when she walks in, and the smile that blossoms across her face nearly has him dropping the skillet on his foot. 

He sets it down and steps towards her, reaching for her, helpless against his own smile. 

“Dance with me,” he asks. 

“There’s no music,” Diana points out, but she smiles and lets him pull her close. 

For once, he doesn’t think of everything he has done and who he has done it to and all the things he has failed to stop because of the long list of excuses running through his head that he will never fully forgive himself for. 

He just holds her as they sway in the sun-drenched kitchen, his voice low in her ear as he hums a tune without a name, the floor cold beneath their feet. 

* * *

The first time Diana saves Steve, he is drenched and confused, and his throat is so sore from salt water that when he breathes his amazed “Wow,” it comes out in a raspy whisper that sounds alien even to his own ears. 

But it’s not the first time that matters most, to him. It’s the second time, on the stairs of the Supreme War Council as the Lasso burns his skin. “We’re going anyway. I’m taking you to the front.”

He can’t believe he’s said the words until she is staring at him, eyes narrowed in suspicion. 

“There are more ways to die than just your heart stopping. You gave me hope,” Steve tells her months later, a quiet confession whispered into her skin. “I don’t know what would have become of me if you hadn’t.” 

He doesn't know if she agrees with him, but she doesn’t argue. 

The first time Diana saves Steve, he is lost and damaged in more ways than any one person should be and so disappointed in the world that the only reason he keeps fighting is that it is the one thing he knows how to do best.

The first time she saves him, he doesn’t believe that he deserves to be saved.

Diana spends the next century and a half proving him wrong.

“It’s not about what you deserve, remember?” she tells him decades later, her hand sweeping through his hair as he turns to her.

Steve’s lips curve into a smile and he’s shaking his head a little. “It’s about what you believe,” he adds dutifully.

Her own smile widens. “And I believe in us.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and feedback are always much appreciated, I will love you forever! 
> 
> Just please be kind :)
> 
> Also, I hope that you're all taking care of yourselves and staying safe!


End file.
